More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)

Crystal Palace

Vast glass and metal building (564m/1850ft long and 124m/408ft wide, covering four times the ground area of St Peter's in Rome), which was designed by *Paxton for the *Great Exhibition of 1851. It was in several ways a revolutionary concept – the first building in which the entire load-bearing structure was an iron frame, the first made from prefabricated units, the first with glass curtain walls. It was designed in nine days and put up on the south side of Hyde Park in six months (Paxton was knighted on its completion).

It enclosed three large elms together with their resident sparrows, a messy threat to the exhibits but safe from shot guns in a glasshouse; it was the duke of Wellington who provided the solution when he advised the queen 'Try sparrowhawks, ma'am'. The building was taken down in 1852 and reconstructed as the centrepiece of a new park in south London, at Sydenham. In 1936 its fittings and contents caught fire and it was destroyed.

But the park survives, still enlivened by its original set of life-size prehistoric monsters (iron and brick covered with painted stucco); the half-completed iguanadon was large enough for 21 people to dine inside it in 1854.